Yes you heard my right, 17 days!
From the 1st of May until the 17th of May, the graduating class in Norway completely transform from perfectly good and normal students to the craziest people that you may meet! And we are no longer called students, we are called RUSS. I have no idea why we are called it, but we have been for the last 100 years. This tradition we have date back to 1905 and that's quite old!
I didn't know much about the story behind this celebration, so I looked it up on the net, and this is what I found out: The modern Norwegian russ tradition dates back to 1905, when the red russ caps were introduced. The caps were initially only used by boys, and were inspired by German students, who in 1904 wore red caps when they visited Norway. In 1916, blue caps were introduced at the Oslo Handelsgymnasium, a high school specializing in economics.
Starting officially on 1 May, the russ festivities last until May 17, Constitution Day, which is the Norwegian National Day; the final exams are actually placed after May 17, however. Those who fail might even become russ again the year after. (In earlier years, exams were held ahead of May 17, but they were moved in an attempt to reduce the extensive russ celebrations, with little luck.)
There are several different types of russ and you can see the differences between them on the color of the clothes that they are wearing.
Red (rødruss): Allmennfag (mathematics, physics, biology, history, literature, English etc); art, music, dance and drama; and athletics. This is by far the most common color.
Blue (blåruss): Allmennfag with economics
- Black (svartruss)
- Vocational courses (like third year electronics)
- Green (grønnruss)
- Agricultural courses
The clothes that I'm wearing on this pic is the traditional RUSS clothes. I am a red-russ and you can tell because I'm wearing red pants and a red cap. On the cap we write in white the RUSS name that we are given by our class mates. It is a sort of nick name that is supposed to describe you in some way or be typical you if you understand what I mean. This name can be anything you like as long as it fits on the cap...As you can see we draw on the back of our coats. Everyone draws whatever they want and also this is supposed to represent them in some way or the other. As I am an Africa fanatic, what is more logical to have on the back than me on top of a pink elephant on top ofAfrica??? :p
We start of this party night to May 1st. That is the date of the so called baptize that we have. For the bapize everyone have to bring some kind of alcohol, most bring beers, but there were also vodktequilaile, rom and other types of booze there!! The whole processess starts with you bringing your alcohol to the Russ-priest, he opens your bottle, takes a sip, then you take a sip and then he shouts out : I baptize you *insert Russ-name of every student*. After this you are officially a russ. The baptize sermony may change from school to school, but this is the way it was done on my school.
Attached to our cap there is a string and in the end there is a tassel. In this string we tie nots around different items as a reward for doing different crazy things. Every year a list with different knots is elaborated (the list was introduced in the 1940's), and the list ios often criticized because some of the knots may be dangerous to do like drinking a lot of alcohol on a short amount of time etc. But most of the knots are only funny, like spending the night in a three (I did that and it was HORRIBLE), kissing 10 strangers on the cheek in 5 minutes, entertaining the audience befor the movie starts at the cinema, sleeping in your teachers garden, stand up every 5th minute during a lesson saying "cheers", sitting under the desk for one lesson. And there are sooo many more, I think it was like 100 knots or something this year so I'm not gonna list them all...We continue doing these crazy things during the entire russ periode and we party almost every day during the periode as well! We can do almost anything without people caring as long as we are wearing our russ clothes. The excuse we have is that we are russ!!! It's great!!!! During the russ period I acctually had an exuse to act like a carzy person:p
After celebrating for 17 days, we end the celebrations with a big parade on the 17 of may. In the morning there is a parade with every school in town (not only russ). The parade goes around in the streets in town, there are orchestras playing the people are singing and shouting and having fun. Everyone dress nicely for the parade and the ones that have a national costume often wear it. The exeption is ofcourse the russ. We wear our ugly and dirty clothes that we have been wearing for 17 days already. In the afternoon there is another parade, and this one is only with russ!!!I think that was about it, don't know what else there is to write about the russ periode exept that it is GREAT!!!!!!
Long live the RUSS=)
